Georg Csarmann
Philipp Groth’s How to tell Gunshots from Fireworks starts off with an unusual title card for a documentary: “Based on the story of Melat Kejeta“. It’s as if the filmmakers acknowledge that no documentary is ever truly objective, or that you can never really capture a person’s life within the construct of a narrative framework. No matter how long a film is, it will always just be a snapshot of what’s thematically and dramaturgically enticing, interpreted through the filmmakers’ artistic lens; both literally and metaphorically.
The non-fictional short uses an experimental approach to tell the story of German long-distance runner Melat Kejeta. Kejeta participated in the women’s marathon at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics and prepared for the event by training in Kenya, a country she was forced to flee nine years before. This premise alone presents enough potential for dramatic conflict, yet the filmmakers impose a distinctively unique conceptual design on top of Kejeta’s narration about her struggles and inspirations, and the suspense around the question if she will be able to win an Olympic medal for her adopted home-country of Germany after everything she had to go through.
Co-directed by Tsellot Melesse and captured with an enthralling flair for otherworldly images by cinematographer Anton Beliaev, director and editor Philipp Groth creates a documentary that is more akin to a tone poem dipped in color shades that seem to mostly exist in the witching hours before and after sunset or the radiant dark blue of a magical nighttime atmosphere. The film was shot in the training camp in the Ngong Hills, Kenya, with minimal equipment—an ARRI Alexa Mini, a few old lenses, and an Easy Rig. As striking as the visual design is, the dreamlike composition distances itself from the usual high-definition b-roll footage that normally accompanies the voice-over narration in these kinds of stories.
The striking cinematography helps differentiate the film from standard sports docs.
How to tell Gunshots from Fireworks still presents itself in the guise of a typical inspiring sports short documentary, but the distinguished approach of the film elevates the subject matter to something more along the lines of a visceral experience. The mise en scène makes the “Based on the story of Melat Kejeta“ title card an apt characterization for a cinematic portrayal that evokes a sensation similar to a distant memory—a mental construction that seems unreal and, at the same time, more real than anything we can see right in front of us. I imagine that this strange combination reflects what Melat Kejeta must have felt, preparing for the most important competition of her athletic life, all the while triggers of her traumatic past still haunt her and new setbacks reel their ugly head every day.
How to tell Gunshots from Fireworks isn’t your run-of-the-mill feel-good sports story; then again, there’s nothing that’s average in Kejeta’s life, but the short still leaves us with a message of hope like any great sports movie does.